Wayward buck damages bank in Rock Rapids

A Rock Rapids bank is getting back to normal operations after a surprise weekend visitor. George Schneiderman, president of Frontier Bank in Rock Rapids says Sunday, right after lunch a small buck deer, coming from Main Street jumped right through their window, and landed in the bank – in the insurance office – and then worked his way diagonally across the lobby and then ended up exiting through another window in the back.

Schneiderman says the visitor didn’t stick around long — maybe three to seven minutes. Schneiderman says it was long enough to do some damage as it demolished two windows, which are special size for the old building. He says a computer was damaged and a desk smashed.

The cause of the damage might have been a mystery, but since it’s a bank, the walk through was caught on camera. Schneiderman says,"That triggered our security equipment and cameras of course, uh, so we have video images of the deer walking across our lobby and jumping over the tellers’ counters. We don’t have a video of him exiting out the back door, or the back window, however."

It’s not clear if the deer intended to make a withdrawal, but Schneiderman says he did leave a deposit — hair, blood, and what he says they hoped was saliva — that was quickly cleaned up. It is thought that the deer probably was eating corn off the ground at the Farmers’ Coop Elevator, four blocks north, and wandered away.